Simple Joy

As you may have noticed I've finally given my blog a name beyond the generic "Birch Family". I've been thinking for awhile about what would be an appropriate name for a journal of our family and the one word I kept coming back to was "simple". I know simple, simplify, and simply are all catch words right now, but for me "simple" has a whole different meaning.

As I was growing up my Grandma Carson would always tell me to live simply. I remember talking with her on the phone one day and she told me "The less things you have in your life the more simply and happily you can live." I've never forgotten that. My grandma was a simple woman in her life. She kept her home simply decorated and clean...always perfectly clean. It was shortly before she passed away that I was sitting in her living room and realized how much I loved her simplicity. I loved the peaceful feeling that her uncluttered and uncomplicated home had.

Our family has not been immune to the current economic situation. In an effort to tighten our purse strings we've cut out a lot of "stuff". Its been very difficult at times, but I realized the other day just how much I've learned. I've learned to get more for less; that joy can be found so much more at home than anywhere else; that frugality is a skill best learned by experience; that I can better use the resources right at my fingertips; and most importantly that if we continue to pay tithing, the windows of heaven will be opened for us.

I am learning to look at my situation as an opportunity to grow and learn new skills and not to shrink back and ask why. I'm learning to look more at what I do have instead of what I don't. The other day while I was doing laundry it hit me: Simple Joy. There is so much happiness to be found in the simple things in life! It truly is the small and seemingly simple things that really are the most important! Like sharing story time with my little boys, or rocking my beautiful newborn to sleep. These are the things that life is made up of. Simple, sweet moments that can bring us the greatest joy.